This book has helped me immensely identify how often I am triggered with emotional flashbacks. It also helped me identify the 2 F types I mostly use. I am primarily a Fawn type but also have moments of Freezing..Fawn types are people-pleasers, codependents. I am no longer as bad a Fawn type as I used to be, as I am now no longer trying to please everyone. If they hurt me, I tell them and I walk away. I try not too care too much anymore about ‘fixing’ others either. I am happy to be empathetic and offer help when I see the other person wants it. I no longer allow others to manipulate my insecurities to get what they want. Years of therapy has helped me look at my reactions and negative learned behaviours and change them to a more constructive way of coping.

Freezing probably happens in moments where I am having a flashback or when I am retraumatised. It also happens when I feel threatened in a situation where I can’t escape. This happened to me during a sexual assault.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone out there who had a difficult, traumatic childhood. Its helpful to people with PTSD or CPTSD. It has helped me put the pieces of the puzzle together as to why I react the way I do in certain triggering situations.

17 thoughts on “Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn – Pete Walker”

i was once a fawn at time, but i’m a clear freezer. i froze (physically) when i was being molested. and my last coping mechanism was freezing mentally, shutting off, when around my mother. similar reaction around toxic no-longer-friend.
may need to get that book !

You welcome! It helped me so much, I had to share it. Yes they are. The author/psychotherapist said they are all part of complex ptsd/trauma. Coping mechanisms that we used as children and probably still do. x

Wow. This is so insightful. I’ve been trying to find the link. I didn’t think I suffered from PTSD because I didn’t remember a lot of what happened, only some things. And I read so where that PTSD was about the victims living in a constant state of remembering or flashbacks. Thanks again. Going on Amazon to find the book.

Yes, sometimes a certain look from someone, a word, a touch or even a smell can really trigger something and we may get really upset without knowing why.This happens to me all the time. If I am ever criticised in the present, I feel extremely hurt and rejected and feel like I am completely flawed and unloved.The same way I felt as a kid with my abusive parents. The mind & body always remember and something in the present can take you back to those same traumatic feelings you had as a child, hence a flashback. I’m very glad if I can help you or others figure out certain pieces of this complex puzzle called trauma ❤

I’m very angry. This page won’t let me copy the details so I past into kindle to find the book. Why must in be so hard to action a glorious lustrous refence that is only available in kindle? This one reason why I have let WordPress as it’s just traumatising trying to obtain the referred resource. ,